Evening Of The Warlocks
by Inspirationally Red
Summary: A tiny village has appeared in the Bane's backyard. Magnus says warlocks did it, but Alec isn't sure. Why would they build a village in the Bane's backyard? Everybody knows Magnus Bane is a weird, a freak. But maybe the warlocks saw something special in Magnus that only they, and maybe Alec, can see. AU. Based on the book Afternoon Of The Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle.
1. Warlocks

**Evening of the Warlocks**

**Part 1 **

**Warlocks**

**-ʍ/ƌ-**

"I have a warlock village in my backyard."

Alec looked up from his book and up past the beams of the pergola. "Sorry?"

Magnus's green-gold eyes glinted through the wisterias that lined the hanging baskets swinging from the beams. "I have a warlock village in my backyard." He repeated, slowly, like he thought Alec might be dumb. "You can come over and see them if you want."

Alec knew about Magnus Bane. Jace had warned him. "Bane isn't a nice person." Jace had told him and Isabelle one lunchtime at school. "He gets into trouble a lot. He definitely isn't someone you want to trust. Remember…" he lowered his voice and drew his siblings closer. "Remember the motorbike he rode to school last spring? The shiny one with all the pipes on the back? Remember how he said he'd gotten it with the money he'd gotten from the paper route? Have you noticed he hasn't been riding it anymore?"

"I remember." Isabelle said.

"He stole it." Jace whispered back. "He stole it from a store downtown. Everybody knows. He was arrested, but he returned the bike, so the police couldn't do anything to him. They're watching, though, to make sure he doesn't steal anything else."

Alec was shocked. As he finished his lunch and turned around to go to class, he caught sight of Magnus's thin shape in the distance, and it looked suddenly dangerous. It looked like a bird of prey, the shape of someone who was bad, someone who lived in a bad house and came from a bad family.

As he looked, Magnus Bane, who didn't have any friends, who clicked around the school in a pair of high-heeled boots and narrowed his eyes at anyone who ventured too close, smiled faintly. "Nice friends!" he called, in a voice that carried straight down the hall to Jace and Isabelle's furious ears.

"See?" Jace hissed, grabbing Alec's arm and leading him away. "He obviously didn't mean that. He doesn't even know we're family! You shouldn't hang around him, Alec. He's a bad person."

Alec bit his lip and set his book down beside him. "What if I don't want to?"

"Fine, if you don't want to, don't." Magnus snapped, instantly moving back to the defensive. His eyes became obscured by the foliage as he moved away from the fence.

"Hey Alec!" Jace came running up to him, blonde hair spiky and flyaway from the game of chase he and Isabelle had been playing on the lawn. Isabelle lagged behind him, pink sweater dusted with grass clippings. "Why don't you come and join us? Isabelle's it now."

Magnus's head popped back over the fence. "Hello, Jonathan. Good evening, Isabelle."

Jace's eyes narrowed as he looked up, eyes briefly raking the leaves before they alighted upon Magnus's eyes. "What do you want, Bane?"

"He says he has a warlock village in his back garden." Alec told them quietly.

"Don't tell them!" Magnus bristled, voice rising. He lowered his voice, speaking quickly. "Warlocks are very private people. They won't like four people blundering around their territory."

"We'll be quiet." Isabelle stood and cocked her hip. "I'd like to see these warlocks myself, _Magnus_." She said his name like it was a dirty, diseased thing.

"If Isabelle's coming, I'm coming too." Jace said immediately.

Magnus's head tilted as he looked at him. "I am unsure whether what you just said can be accounted as chivalry, courageousness or an utter disregard towards a fellow human's rules and restrictions, Jonathan." Magnus liked to use big words. Isabelle said it was to impress people; rumour had it he had picked them up from the police that always came around to arrest him. He looked over at Alec. "Are you coming too?"

At first, Alec didn't want to. He had heard the rumours; that Magnus was a bad person, always getting into trouble and being arrested – but what if there really were warlocks? Apparently, there were – a whole village of them, living down in Magnus Bane's shadowy, overgrown backyard that was itself in the back of Magnus's huge, forbidding black house. Magnus's garden was not the place Alec would have picked to build a village if he was a warlock. Where there weren't thistles and weeds, there were trees – tall, overgrown and looming, rustling their leaves menacingly and always shrouding the landscape in blackness. There were old rusty car parts half buried in all the overgrown grass, and the skeleton of a washing line. Carpets of brambles and poison ivy grew under the trees and amongst the bushes. Nobody ever played in Magnus's garden. But then, as Magnus would have said, nobody had ever been invited to his garden – except Alec, and his siblings, on the first evening of the warlocks.

When Alec saw the warlock village, he could hardly believe his eyes.

"Are you sure it isn't mice?" he asked Magnus who stood beside him, tall and thin and bored. Alec nudged the brightly coloured autumn leaves with a finger, nervous of dislodging any of the delicate structure. "It looks about the right size for a mouse."

Beside him, Jace snorted, gold hair gleaming brightly in the lights from the Lightwood's front porch over the hedge. "We've discovered mice that build. I'll alert the media."

Isabelle straightened, and dusted off her skirt. "Seriously. You except us to believe this was some weird elves building? It had to be you." She put her hand on her hip, boots crunching lightly on the fine covering of frost that coated the bramble-choked lawn.

"Warlocks." Magnus corrected flintily, his voice reminding Alec of coffee and dark woods and rain. He mimicked Isabelle's pose. "And last time I cared to remember, I got an F for all my Art assignments, Lightwood."

Alec sighed into the wintry air at the bickering, and leant down further. "This looks like a well," he said, tracing the thin silver line with one finger. He peered closely inside. "And a bucket for drawing water…"

"Not a bucket," Magnus snorted, raking a ring-laden hand through his jet black hair. "A hollowed out cork!"

"And now they make things out of corks." Jace said to nobody. "What a discovery."

Magnus shot him a narrow-eyed glare. "If you're so cynical, why don't you just leave?" he gestured with one finger towards the rusting gate, half-hidden beneath banks of ivy and brambles. "Go on. You need to twist and pull the latch."

Jace answered coolly. "As long as my sister's still here, I'm staying."

"How gallant." Magnus rolled his black-ringed eyes violently, and twitched his head sideways slightly, flicking his black hair away from his face. He was fourteen, three years older than Alec, and he had never spoken to any of the Lightwoods before. He'd barely even looked at them.

"Can I try and draw water from the well?" Isabelle asked.

Magnus glared. "No."

Jace rolled his eyes. "This is boring! I'm going." He walked away, then stopped, lingering by the gate. "Isabelle, are you coming?"

"I bet these aren't even real warlock houses!" Isabelle hissed spitefully towards Magnus as she walked off to join Jace by the gate.

"I'll stay." Alec told her quietly as she passed.

Magnus looked at him.

The roofs of the houses were oak and maple leaves attached to the sticks at sloping angles. Because it was autumn, the leaves were beautiful autumn colours, orange-red, reddish-orange, brown, deep yellow, gold-brown. Each house had a small garden out the front, neatly bordered with different stones.

"They used the leaves dropping off the trees over there," Alec pointed.

Magnus rolled one shoulder, cracking the joint, before doing the same to the other one. "Why not? It makes the houses look pretty."

"How did they manage to get the little pebbles?" Alec asked, looking around Magnus's backyard for some source of stones.

"Magic." said Magnus Bane.

Alec looked at him suspiciously then. It wasn't that he didn't believe in magic, it was more like he couldn't place anything magical about Magnus at all. There had never been anything particularly mysterious about him. Nothing rugged or handsome. His face was narrow and all angles, the chin pointed, and his eyes were Asian and slanted. They were such strange coloured eyes they were all a person could see when they looked at his face – not the unhealthily pale skin, the shadows and hollows around his cheeks, but the eyes, vivid and wide and staring. He rather gave the impression of a gaunt thin wildcat, and a scruffy wildcat, if his clothes were anything to judge by. An assortment of fishnets, black leather, spikes, and chains, they hung off his frame like a wrinkled, spiny sack, all dark and goth and dangerous. ("Doesn't he care how weird he looks?" a new girl had wondered aloud in school, prompting cries of "No!" from every direction.)

Least magical of all, Magnus wore high-heeled black boots identical to the ones Alec had seen in the women's shoe section at the store.

"Scrawny little fiend." Alec had heard a teacher mutter as he passed him in the corridor. He didn't know what it meant.

"He stole the shoes from his mum and then killed her." One of Jace's friends had said.

"No, he didn't. Raphael, that's terrible!"

Normally, fifth graders were too shy to risk commenting on the people in the higher grades. But Magnus Bane had been held back twice and was taking the sixth grade all over again for the second time, which made him a curiosity.

At the end of Magnus's garden, Alec recalled all those insults and rumours while he stared at those boots. Then he glanced up at Magnus's face, and those eyes.

"How do you know its warlocks? Like Izzy said, you could have built them yourself. Or it could have been some other animal, like a bird or a squirrel." He straightened up and as he did, he couldn't fail to notice something. "I'm nearly as tall as you!" he exclaimed, surprise and joy mingled in his voice. They were almost the same, if it weren't for Magnus's thinness. He was just a few centimetres above him.

Magnus stepped away from him quickly. He put his hands on his hips and glared his slanted, gold-green eyes straight into Alec's blue ones.

"Look." He said slowly, levelly. "I am under no obligation to keep you here, when your siblings have already left. I didn't have to show you this. I just thought you'd like to experience something real for a change. If you don't believe it, that's your problem. But I _know _its warlocks, and I'm sticking to it."

So there it was – a village of warlocks, living in Magnus Bane's overgrown garden, amidst the towering trees and rustling bushes, hiding amongst the poison ivy and frenziedly growing brambles. Alec wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it himself – which was why he made a silent promise to come back to Magnus's garden, at the end of the first evening of the warlocks.

**ʍ/ƌ**

"Magnus Bane thinks he's got warlocks living in his backyard." Alec told his mother after dinner, having come home (rather late) from looking at the village. Magnus's garden backed up against the side of the Lightwood's, which irritated Alec's mother, who believed that all houses should be neat and well kept. But who was she to complain to? Magnus's parents didn't care about their property – Alec had never ever seen them come out, and they kept all their blinds shut tight, even in the summertime.

Maryse Lightwood sighed. "I wish you wouldn't make up such stories, Alec, and have you really been playing around in the Magnus Bane's backyard? You know he's a bad influence."

"It wasn't just me, Jace and Izzy went too!" Alec protested, keeping his voice low in case one of his siblings heard him. As he was older, he got to stay up a tiny bit more than each of his siblings, and didn't want to wake them up.

Maryse sighed again. "So that must be why I found a bramble sticking to the back of Jace's shirt. I don't like you playing in that yard, it's dangerous. If you want to play with Magnus, invite him over."

"But he never leaves his house, so he won't come over here. And he never invites_ anyone _over." Alec added significantly. He tried to look as Magnus had done that evening – intense and cool and bored – but all his mother did was give him a funny look, so something must have gone wrong.

Alec couldn't see himself ever bringing himself around to asking Magnus over – even if he did, Alec couldn't picture him in their front garden, which was where he and Jace and Isabelle normally played – the thought of Magnus climbing up the apple tree to their tree-house was an image that Alec just could not associate with him. And besides, what would Magnus think? Alec's mouth drooped. He would probably raise an eyebrow at the neatly clipped lawn, roll his eyes when Alec pointed out the water feature, which had birds fluttering in it every day, scoff at the immaculately pruned rose bushes, and as for the pergola, where Alec sat and read…

Alec couldn't begin to contemplate his reaction to the pergola. The Lightwood's garden, in all its beautiful, immaculate perfection, seemed a stark contrast to Magnus's own, where things rustled in the shadows underneath the elms, and strange sounds hissed from the bracken.

Later, when Alec sat in bed reading, with the little patchwork blanket his mother had sewn for him when he was little draped over his knees, he couldn't help looking up and out through the window to Magnus's house and the tangled ivy and bracken of the garden.

"_Our_ garden's awesome," Jace had said proudly and, until that afternoon, Alec had always agreed. He thought it was one of the most peaceful and nice gardens on earth.

But the warlock village in Magnus's back yard changed things. Not that Alec believed in them. No, he did not. Why would he? Magnus Bane was not his friend. Magnus Bane was a bad person.

But even without being believed in or noticed, magic has its way of changing things. It moves invisibly through the air, dissolving into unusual patterns, quickly dismembering normal ways of seeing, allowing new ways, new sensations, to slink in, quickly, quietly, like a stray cat sliding through the bushes.

And at that very moment it was moving, reaching its sly, sneaky tendrils from the depths of Magnus's backyard, over the fence, and into Alec's bedroom.

Alec fell asleep with Magnus Bane's green-gold stare burning behind his closed lids.

**ʍ/ƌ**

"Magnus says warlocks don't like being outside," Alec remarked the next morning, when he and his siblings were going to school. It was a brilliantly cold morning. Their breath steamed in the air as they hurried across the lawn, boots crunching on the frost covered grass. The tree house looked particularly sad and solemn as it perched in its tree amidst naked branches, morosely watching the iced-over bird bath.

Jace was strolling alongside him, fiddling with his mittens and rubbing his cold hands together. At the sound of Magnus Bane's name, he rolled his eyes, but listened.

"Magnus says they like bushes and trees to hide in, and they use all the twigs and stuff lying around to make their houses." Alec found himself studying the birdbath with new, critical eyes.

Jace didn't answer. He bent over to snatch up his mitten from where it had fallen on the ground and tossed it from hand to hand, avoiding Alec's gaze.

"And they use ivy as ropes," Alec added, turning to stare up at the tree house ladder, which was thick hessian, frosted over from the cold night.

As he looked around the garden, he couldn't not see Magnus Bane's house. Magnus Bane's house loomed at the side of the Lightwood's garden, like the sheer, impassable reaches of a cliff, sprouting blackly up towards the sky at the side of the Lightwood's property. Although it was well into the morning, the house remained as dark and as silent as ever, not so much as a hint of light in any of its windows. Now that Alec thought about it, he couldn't remember ever seeing any light in the windows of Magnus's house. Black and scowling was normally how the house looked, with all the curtains drawn tight. Alec had never heard the door open or close, never heard or seen any car move slowly up the weed-infested driveway, never heard any sound or movement.

What were Magnus and his family doing now? Alec had a grim vision of a motionless figure in high heels and makeup, sitting alone at a table in the dark, but quickly shrugged it off. Magnus was probably eating breakfast. Alec thought of his own household, and felt calmed. Yes, that was right. Magnus's mother would be doing things in the kitchen, and his father would be reading the newspaper.

"Sit up straight!" Alec imagined Magnus's father. Or "Go and change into some more practical shoes for school!" for Alec had no doubt Magnus Bane would be wearing the shoes he normally wore – black high heels.

Magnus would most likely be frowning after that. Alec was sure Magnus was not the type of person to be reminded of his manners. Too old and too tough. Certainly not the type to have warlocks living in his back garden, but there they were.

"You're going to miss the bus!" Jace shouted as he stomped towards the front gate, interrupting Alec's thoughts. The yellow school bus was idling by the street outside, filling the cold air with exhaust fumes.

"Wait for me!" Alec cried and, with one last look at the looming shape of Magnus Bane's house, turned and plunged towards the bus.

**ʍ/ƌ**

Three days later, when Alec had almost managed to put the warlock village completely out of his mind, Magnus Bane suddenly appeared by his elbow in the corridor at school. He appeared so unexpectedly – all the other sixth graders were having a History test – that for a moment, Alec couldn't believe it was him.

Magnus Bane checked both ways, then looked at him. He was wearing white face paint with black mascara today, and had threaded silver charms through his hair. Magnus Bane leant towards him and spoke in an excited, breathless voice.

"What have you been doing? You were meant to come ages ago! The warlocks have built a tiny little swimming pool, and a playground." He yanked off a charm that was bumping against his eyebrow and smiled nervously. "You can come and see if you want."

"A playground!" despite himself, Alec felt a surge of excitement. "How did they do that?"

"Lots and lots of Popsicle sticks. And they made a huge merry-go-round out of an old bicycle wheel and stones. It really goes around. The warlocks come out at night and play on it, I've seen them." Magnus's gold-green eyes were glittering. "They'd moved it this morning."

Alec glanced at the floor, where he noticed that both of Magnus Bane's high heels were caked in mud, trailing dirty prints across the wood floor. His legs were covered by tight black leather pants that disappeared under the hem of a massive, misshapen black sweater. He didn't seem to be wearing any socks or belt at all, and a part of Alec was repulsed. Nobody in the school looked as weird as Magnus Bane, or so scary and unhealthy-looking. But another half of him was oddly tempted.

"I'll ask my mom if I can come over this afternoon." He told Magnus, and saw the older boy's green-gold eyes narrow.

"Fine, don't come then," Magnus Bane hissed, half turning away, like a raven bristling all its feathers. "I take the liberty of informing you, but all your rules and regulations…"

"I want to," Alec said desperately. "It's just that my mother…"

Magnus looked angry. "Who cares about your stupid mother?"

"She's just… she thinks your garden is infected, and..."

Magnus Bane held out his hands. Each of his hands was covered in a black glove that stretched all the way up to his elbows. "Do I look bad, Alec? Do I look like somebody who is infected?" Magnus glared. "You won't catch anything, but you don't want to come anyway, so don't. The warlocks don't like people coming and looking at their stuff. They aren't show-offs like most of the people here."

"It isn't that," Alec tried to get out, but Magnus Bane had already turned around and headed off, back ramrod stiff and straight. Alec could tell by the tightness in his shoulders and the tremble of his jaw that he was upset.

"Wait!" he called. "Hold on! I forgot to ask you…"

"I know what it is," he sneered over his shoulder. "But I'm not telling. Even if I told you, you wouldn't believe me. None of you would!" he shouted at the rest of the students lining the corridor. Some nervously edged away, while others stopped to stare at him: at his clothes and his shoes and his hair falling all over his face. "You just wouldn't!" he shrieked, losing control. He began to run down the corridor in a peculiar fashion, with a furious scowl and clenched fists. Like a warlock, thought Alec. He had only ever read about them in books, but he imagined the way they ran would be something like that – graceful yet stiff at the same time, stumbling forward with flying feet, nearly falling headfirst in those ridiculous shoes.

A few people began to laugh.

"Claves!" Magnus yelled at them as he tottered. "Stupid, useless claves!" He wrenched off each of his shoes and threw them out the corridor window – the laughter abruptly died. Magnus began to run much faster now, surging on ahead, flying, pale, bare feet with long black toenails.

Along the corridor, groups of students carefully moved out of his way.

**ʍ/ƌ**

That afternoon, at just past four o'clock, Alec sneaked through the rusted, squeaking gate into Magnus Bane's back garden, all while feeling scared, tense, like he should not have come at all. The garden hissed and stirred around him, filling the air with the ominous sounds of twigs snapping and branches rustling and the cold wind moaning, and the house loomed in the background like a fortress.

Alec's teeth began to chatter. He shouldn't have come. Magnus Bane was too strange. His house was too scary. Alec should have stayed home, in his safe, warm kitchen. He could have done a million things. He could have helped Izzy bake a cake. He could have played Bionicles with Jace. He could have helped his mother around the house. He could have finished reading The Famous Five series. But, by the thinnest thread of enchantment, the warlock village was drawing him.

How did it do that? What was its magic? Try as he might, Alec couldn't get the images of the curious little houses out of his head – the little leaf roofs and their pebbled driveways. The image of the well danced and flickered in and out of his mind, disappearing and reappearing like a conjuror's rabbit.

Alec's curiosity did not extend to Magnus Bane however, and the closer he came to the back garden, the more he hoped Magnus would be away. He remembered their argument at school, and remembered back even further to all the rumours, and Jace's warnings – his solemn, sensible warnings. But those warnings were strangely soft now, dulled by some sort of other power, even though he was freezing in the cold evening, and deathly, deathly scared.

A drooping weeping willow tree presented a thin veil of pale green branches, like a curtain. Alec raised his arms to protect himself as he stepped through, to protect his face – and for a moment had a terrible feeling he was walking blind into a trap. But when he snapped open his eyes in a panic, only the Bane's backyard presented itself, still as shadowy and overgrown as always.

A little distance away to the right, a thin black figure sat slumped on a pile of logs. He looked more like a desperate artist in the grips of a terrible inner torment than the moody, savage, unpredictable boy Alec knew it was.

Alec approached warily, removing his hands from his pockets, almost as if to show he wasn't armed. He had just gotten within three feet of the woodpile when Magnus's violently black ringed eyes flew open.

"Wie ben je en hoe durf je stoort mij!" he shouted, as Alec stood frozen, rooted mutely to the spot. "Je moet hier niet zijn, ga weg! Wie ben jij eigenlijk?"

Then his eyes focused. "Oh, it's you."

"What language was _that_?" Alec gasped, still frozen in his spot.

Magnus raked his hand through his hair, sweeping a few strands of black off his face, and avoided Alec's gaze. "Dutch."

Alec was intrigued. "Are you Dutch?"

Those gold-green eyes flashed angrily. "No." Magnus sprang up, and whatever had been miserable or gloomy about him before seemed to vanish. He jumped neatly off the woodpile with a clatter of planks, his heels making almost no sound as he landed exactly beside Alec.

Alec tilted his head back to look up at him. Magnus's raggedy hair cast his face in alternately dappling shadow, gold-green eyes catching the light and glittering. He was still wearing the exact same clothes he had been wearing at school, and his breath steamed in the air.

"I thought you weren't coming." He said quietly.

"Well, I did," Alec mumbled.

"The playground's over there," Magnus pointed, tone icy.

They headed over to look right away. As soon as he saw it, Alec let out a gasp. It was twice as big as he had first imagined it to be, and constructed in such a complex, complicated way that one only needed to glance at it once to know it had to be the work of special, magical hands.

A small, delicate series of swings made out of twigs and leaves stood near a slide made of bark and Popsicle sticks. The wondrous merry-go-round Magnus had mentioned stood in the centre. Two bicycle wheels without their rubber tires were suspended above the ground on a metal rod that passed through the wheel's centres. The rod's tips were rammed firmly into the ground. Marvellous little stone carvings of animals were attached by strings of ivy to act as short, stumpy seats. Numerous pieces of wire linked the spokes of the two wheels so that when they turned, they turned together.

"How did it get here?" Alec asked in wonderment.

"It was here yesterday, when I came out," Magnus said, with such awe in his voice Alec had no doubt he was telling the truth. He looked at Magnus in admiration.

"I still don't know how the merry-go-round goes," Magnus continued. "I've looked and looked, but I can't find a motor anywhere. They probably have some special power or magic that we don't know about." He reached out and spun the merry-go-round with a single finger, transforming the mess of wires and spokes into a miasma of silver and black flickers. He glanced at Alec, and stepped away. "You can have a go if you want."

There was no hint of any of the rage he had possessed in the school corridor that morning. He treated Alec respectfully – as if he was, not a friend, but just an acquaintance that had stopped by for a visit and would soon be off. "It doesn't matter where you push it," Magnus added, as Alec leaned forward.

It was very big, Alec thought, as the merry-go-round spun rapidly around with a rapid series of small clicks. So big, in fact, it would have lifted a person off the ground… if that person was very, very small. A thought occurred to him, and he glanced up at Magnus.

"These warlocks… they would have to be very small, wouldn't they?"

Magnus rolled his eyes. "You're a veritably staggering mental genius, Alec."

Alec smiled slightly and knelt down beside the merry-go-round. He glanced around the yard, keeping the seats of the merry-go-round at eye level, trying to imagine how the yard would look like from the perspective of a warlock. There was the skeletal frame of the rusted washing line rising above the grass like a hand. The tops of the trees seemed like impassable mountains, bordered by long grass and bushes that seemed like the smoke stacks of ocean liners. In the distance, Magnus Bane's house towered over it all like a forbidding black castle.

Alec pulled away sharply. "That looks so weird!" he said to Magnus. "I wouldn't like to be a warlock – it would be too strange, and too little."

Magnus's eyes leapt to Alec's face, his eyebrows drawing down above them like thunderous black storm clouds. "What do you mean, strange and little?" he demanded sharply. "If you were a warlock, it wouldn't be weird at all – _you'd _be the weird one, not them."

"Sorry!" Alec said, abashed. "I didn't mean…"

"Yes you did," Magnus looked scornfully at him. He shoved Alec away from the merry-go-round, halting its spin with a sharp stab of his finger. He turned back to Alec, moving between him and the merry-go-round almost protectively.

"Let me make this clear," he said slowly, towering over him. "_Nobody _insults the warlocks in front of me. And nobody insults them by mistake, either," he added, as Alec opened his mouth sharply, seeing that he was about to protest.

Abruptly, at Alec's shock, his tone gentled – those once flashing eyes growing sadder, dimmer. "Before you make any assumptions, try to see it from the perspective of a warlock, alright?"

"Alright," Alec apologized, ashamed. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again,"

Magnus nodded, gold eyes once again becoming cool, flinty. "See that you don't."

Alec glanced at the playground. It was so wonderful; he could easily see how Magnus would be right. Particularly if there was a horde of warlocks hiding nearby, listening in on their conversations. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he glanced around – an odd sensation, like the glide of a steady, icy finger, ran down his neck.

"I know. I feel it too." Magnus Bane said quietly, noting Alec's unease. "I get those feelings all the time here."

"You do? Do you think the warlocks…?"

"Sssshhh!" Magnus's finger flew to Alec's lips warningly. "It's best not to talk about it," he continued in a whisper, removing his hand. "Just keep on looking, but _do not touch anything_. Do not disturb anything, and do not look for anything other than what I specify, is that clear?"

Alec nodded quickly. Satisfied, Magnus stepped away.

"Come and see the pool they've made!" he shouted suddenly, so suddenly Alec jumped. His voice echoed around the tree and bush lined garden, obviously intended for the invisible listeners. He spun around on his heel and headed for the opposite side of the garden, large black sweater fluttering around his thin, wiry frame like wings.

"Wait for me!" Alec cried, and the pressure of the unseen warlock eyes at his back was so great he almost sprinted across the grass.

**ʍ/ƌ**

That night, when Alec was upstairs in his bedroom reading before bed, he put his nose up against the cool glass of his window and tried to see out through the dark.

The warlocks would be in their village by now, he mused as he rubbed the cover of the book he was reading – a collection of Grimm fairy tales. They would be sitting in their houses, playing on the playground, talking in a chorus of tiny voices that sounded akin to the rustling of the leaves. He could feel them out and about, sense their tiny, precious little forms scurrying through Magnus Bane's back garden.

Wasn't that the sound of the merry-go-round turning? Alec strained to see through the blackness.

"You're obsessed," Jace had complained at dinner. But Alec knew he wasn't.

"Warlocks are almost invisible," Magnus had said. "They don't really hide – they just make it so they can't be seen."

"But they have been seen. You said so yourself," Alec said.

"Uh-huh," Magnus had answered absently, fiddling with the charms in his hair. The miniature silver fairies glistened between his fingers. "Some people have seen them. They only reveal themselves to the people they trust."

"Do you think the warlocks will ever trust us?" Alec asked. Magnus had looked at him, and he knew the conversation was to stop there. It was only afterwards, just as Alec was slipping out of the gate, that he heard Magnus whisper, so quietly it was barely audible:

"A lot of people have _hurt _them, Alec."

**ʍ/ƌ**

"Try to see it from the perspective of a warlock," Magnus Bane had said. During the next week, Alec found himself slipping into that perspective with remarkable ease. No matter what stares he attracted, no matter what muted muttering came from the halls, no matter what odd looks his siblings shot him, Alec didn't stop. It did not feel unnatural or abnormal at all – not with Magnus Bane hovering nearby, watching, approving, whispering, explaining, drawing upon his seemingly endless supply of information about warlocks.

He knew everything that was to know about them, or so it seemed to Alec, whose eyes now often followed the older boy's distinctive figure at school as he walked through halls, down corridors, into classrooms. Jace and Isabelle watched this newfound interest with growing alarm.

Alec had not realized exactly how great his sibling's anxiety had gotten until they took him by the arm one lunchtime at school, steered him into an empty chair in the cafeteria, and tried to warn him.

"What is the matterwith you?" Isabelle exclaimed. Alec stopped watching Magnus's back from across the cafeteria, and looked up at his sister. "Magnus Bane is not a good person. He's out to trick you. Everybody knows it, but do you listen? No! You're over at his house every afternoon, you never shut up about the warlock village. And why were you looking at him? He'll never sit with you."

"Sometimes he does," Alec answered truthfully. It was true, it was more because Alec had gone up to him first, but Magnus had never objected to him sitting with him. In fact, he almost seemed to enjoy it. It was just love for his siblings that stopped Alec from sitting with Magnus every day.

Jace sighed, and picked up where Izzy had left off. "Do you know what Magnus Bane eats every day for lunch?" he demanded. "All these coloured drinks! He brings all these tubes of blue and pink stuff to school every day and drinks them! Can you believe him? It's so gross!" Jace's eyes widened in horror.

"It's medicine," Alec replied. "Magnus has a weak stomach. He can't eat cakes or pizza or burgers or anything like that, so he has to have medicine. He makes them himself. He told me." As he spoke, he looked behind him over his shoulder. Magnus Bane was wearing a large black coat today, and was eating lunch on his usual, solitary table, midway between the goths and the artists. As Alec watched, the older boy raised a vial of electric-blue liquid to his lips and drained it in one. Then, as if some intangible sense had prompted him, Magnus raised his head, looked right at them, and grinned. Black lips stretched wide in a bone-white face, wide eyes accentuated wildly by bright blue mascara.

Jace and Isabelle glared. Alec smiled and waved. Magnus raised an eyebrow at his siblings; eyes veiled by a thin layer of scorn, and ran a finger bristling with rings viciously across his throat.

"Do you know that Magnus Bane's parents are the leaders of this massive gang?" Jace asked Alec later that day. "Clary told me."

Alec just rolled his eyes, and Jace was taken aback at how Magnus-like the gesture looked. "Don't be silly. Magnus's mother died long ago, and his father works at a grocery shop." His voice even held the same, accented drawl.

"They're not evil," Alec said, with such innocent conviction Jace fled to report to Isabelle.

"I swear it's like Magnus Bane's put a spell on him." Jace hissed to her, deep in the library. "Alec believes everything he says!"

Spell or no spell, there was no denying that Alec was getting more and more attached to the Bane's backyard with every passing day. There was a surprisingly large amount of work to do around a warlock village, Alec had discovered, to his pleasant surprise. No sooner than when he had just sat down on the woodpile to look at it, a gust of wind would blow a fragile leaf roof off, and Alec would spend half an hour chasing it around the garden.

At times it seemed like it wasn't the wind that was guiding it at all, but invisible hands, and invisible mouths that laughed and mocked Alec's attempts to catch it. _You can't catch us, _the warlocks seemed to be saying, with their silent, immense voices that seemed as much a part of the garden as the brambles and the bushes. _You can run after us for days, but you'll never catch us. _

Alec had just been carefully piecing two houses back together when Magnus Bane had appeared at his elbow. He did that a lot – he often left Alec alone with the village, while he attended to some unexplainable business in the house. Alec had never asked him about it, and Magnus had never said exactly what it was he was doing, but Alec knew Magnus would likely never speak to him again if he asked him about it, so he stayed silent.

When Magnus saw Alec mending the broken houses, he yelled and yanked him back.

"Don't touch!" he yelled at him, heavily pierced face inches from his own. "These are warlock houses and only warlocks know how to build them correctly. Humans don't know how!"

"Well, I didn't know!" Alec snapped, jerking away. "You never told me that! How am I supposed to know what you haven't told me?"

Magnus stared at him for a few seconds. Then he sighed, fiddled with a stud in his nose, and said in a kinder voice. "That's okay. You weren't to know – I'll take responsibility for that." As Alec looked at him, a smile broke out over his face. "Instead we'll give the elves little things." He began to head off through the dense grass, black high heels sinking several inches.

Alec had to jog to keep up with him – Magnus's stride was much longer than his, despite there being only a few centimetres difference in their height. "Like what?" he asked.

Magnus grinned, a flash of white teeth and black lips. "Presents! Warlocks love presents!"

It turned out 'presents' really meant 'food'. Alec never would have guessed in a million years that there would be so much food hiding amidst the tangle and clutter of the Bane's garden. A small bush partly hidden beneath a tangled blackberry bush held several tiny white flowers.

"Warlocks use the petals from these flowers as humans might use slices of bread," Magnus explained as he picked them, black-nailed hands moving diligently through the green, leafy fronds.

In the mud squatted pure white mushrooms. "Warlock cake," Magnus added them to the small collection growing in the palm of his hand. "Poisonous to humans, but warlocks love it. To them, it's a delicacy."

There were sticky green seeds and little pink berries growing under a bush that Alec's mother would have called a weed. There certainly were no weeds in Alec's garden, or muddy places for growing mushrooms.

"Your garden is perfect for warlocks." Alec said wistfully as he helped Magnus collect the little pink berries. "Nobody in the street has a house like this."

Magnus smiled faintly. "I've known that for a long time, Alec." He said, in that gently condescending way of his.

"Do elves eat normal flowers?" Alec asked as they walked back the village, hands full of tiny little warlock food. "I have lots of flowers in my garden."

Magnus looked at him with a curled lip. "No. They hate them. Regular flowers are poisonous to warlocks."

"I thought so," Alec muttered. "I've been noticing that about warlocks."

"Noticing what?" Magnus asked.

"That what's bad for people is good for them. And how they like things that people find… not very nice," he said apologetically, wondering if Magnus would think he was talking about his garden.

Magnus smiled. "You're learning." He broke off four acorns from a nearby oak tree and gouged the acorn out of the caps. His long nails were useful for tasks like that. Alec watched in awe. Magnus filled two of the cups with water, so they looked almost exactly like small drinks. They left the small collection of food on a leaf inside a wide, circular array of white stones Magnus said was probably the village square.

"Will it be safe there?" Alec asked worriedly, tilting his head to survey the presents. "Should we cover it with something? A bird could wreck it. Plus, it's getting really windy nowadays," Afternoons had gotten progressively chillier as the month flew by. The nasty chill bite to the wind and the bare branched trees announced that autumn was nearly over. It would soon be winter and, Alec thought as he looked around the garden, there was a definite feel of the seasons changing.

He looked up towards Magnus. Magnus Bane was slouching by the playground, watching the merry-go-round as it spun around and around.

"If we cover the food up, then the warlocks won't know what it is," he answered distantly, eyes fixed on the spinning bicycle wheels. "They're very suspicious creatures. Don't worry," Magnus added, raising his eyes from the spokes to look at him. "I check on the village every morning and every night before I go to bed."

"What will the warlocks do in winter?" Alec asked. "Won't they get cold?" his own feet felt icy and, looking down, he realised his once pristine white sneakers had gotten caked in mud.

Magnus shrugged, a birdlike dip of his shoulders. "They'll hibernate, probably." He fished inside his pocket for a moment, and drew out an acorn cup he had gotten from the tree. Raising it to his lips, he blew. To Alec's astonishment, a high, shrill note shrieked from the little acorn cup.

"How do you do that?" he asked in amazement.

Magnus shot him a flinty smile. "Here." He grabbed another acorn cup from his pocket and handed it to him, before raising his own. "You have to hold it like this." He demonstrated, bending his long fingers around until the cup was almost completely covered.

Alec had just figured out where to put his fingers when Magnus stopped suddenly and looked behind him to his house. Some sort of signal invisible to Alec must have caught his eye, because he turned and began to walk rapidly towards the dilapidated front porch.

"You have to go home now," he called to Alec over his shoulder, voice becoming more and more distant as he got further away. "My father wants me to come in."

When Alec stared after him in surprise, Magnus flung himself around in a whirl of a black coat and scarf and bellowed. "Go on! Get out of here!"

He strode up the steps of the porch, muttering long, angry sentences under his breath in Dutch, and disappeared with a slam of the door.

Alec sighed. He glanced one last time at the warlock's presents to see that nothing had been disturbed, secretly hoping it had, and he would get to see a warlock. When nothing happened, he sighed and began trudging back towards the rusty old gate. The wind had stopped coming in short, sharp gusts and was now a continuous stream of icy air – Alec shivered and turned up the collar of his coat.

Suddenly, one of the leaf roofs came apart and was blown up straightaway by the wind. It was deep gold in colour, and almond-shaped. Like Magnus's eyes, Alec realised, and felt strangely curious. The moment seemed so meaningful, so magical, that for a moment Alec wondered if the warlocks were behind it.

The thought made him smile as he turned to the gate. He was just about to pull and twist the latch when another flutter caused him to turn back quickly and squint towards Magnus's house.

A shade in one of the windows had been flicked up. Cold fear clenched Alec's heart as he stared up at the window. A thin pale face had risen where the shade had been, a face with a long, thin nose and gaunt, sunken cheeks, who stared down at him with wide, black eyes.

For a few, paralysed seconds, Alec stared back. Then he turned quickly away and bolted for the gate that would lead to the street beyond, and his own yard. As soon as he was behind it, he turned and scanned the towering reaches of the house, but the face had vanished. The shade had already been drawn back into place.

"Stupid." He muttered to himself. His voice sounded high and unfamiliar. He gave himself a quick pinch. "Just calm down. It was only Magnus's father."

But the face hadn't looked as if it had belonged to any father. It had been too twisted, too gaunt. Too frightening.

**ʍ/ƌ**

The weather turned warm again. Indian summer, Maryse Lightwood called it, and she was happy because "Thank God I won't have to close all the doors and stack the logs just yet! It's wonderful, having the fresh air, and you, young lady…" she added, eyes lingering on Isabelle's ever-lengthening legs. "Will need a new winter coat." Alec hadn't grown that much during the month, and was secretly glad he was able to keep his beloved old brown coat, no matter how much Jace laughed at it and said it made him look like an Eskimo. Jace himself had to get three new jumpers, a pair of pants, and two coats, that was how much he had grown.

One day, Alec and Jace were racing cars up and down the banister of the stairs. Isabelle was sitting on the bottom step and watching from behind her book, giving off every air of disapproval, but Alec knew she secretly loved to watch.

"Look at it go!" Jace cheered as he watched his Hotwheels Indy Eagle speed down the banister before it slammed into the rounded wooden knob at the end and fell off. Alec watched his own Angeleno follow, and wondered if Magnus found doing such things fun. Probably not.

"Catch the red one!" Isabelle shrieked, then sighed in relief as Alec caught the Ferrari that had come bouncing down the steps.

Suddenly the doorbell rang, so loudly and so unexpectedly that Alec and Jace both jumped and upended the box of toy cars all over the stairs. Alec saw his mother's long legs traverse the hallway towards the as he, Jace and Isabelle scrambled to pack up all the cars before she noticed.

"Hello, Henry. I wasn't expecting you for another five days." He heard his mother say.

"Robert decided I was disturbing Max," came the muffled reply.

"Oh dear," Maryse sighed, without a hint of dismay towards the implied slur on her ex-husband.

"It's Uncle Henry!" Jace cheered and charged over to the door, completely forgetting about the mess of cars on the stairs.

It turned out that Uncle Henry was set to stay for several weeks. They all loved Uncle Henry, with his shock of disarrayed brown hair, absent-minded beaming smile, and his trademark battered brown suitcase. He had an adoptive son called Will whom Alec had met at several points and didn't like – Will looked too much like him, and was definitely too snobby and rude; he had a way of talking to you that made you feel like you were the most inferior being on the planet. Isabelle always seemed to become flustered whenever Will was around, which only increased Alec's dislike for him.

The days flew by with the icy wind. On most evenings, Henry could be found pottering around the garden. He stared at the flowers, occasionally trimmed the hedges and lay down on the lawn, whistling cheerily to himself and flinging odd remarks to the garden at large.

"It's a pity you can't drink milkshakes. Chocolate ones are just the ticket on these kinds of days," he would say to the gerberas if the day was warm. Or, after a heavy rain, "Well, we've had a regular drowning party out here today, I see. Wait and I'll get the towels." He would then attempt to borrow Maryse's best towels from the linen cupboard, despite her protests and Jace clinging hold of his legs to stop him from reaching the door. Despite this, everybody loved Uncle Henry.

Everybody that is, except Magnus Bane. "Is he a clave?" he asked Alec suspiciously one day after Alec had finished recounting Henry's latest antic, which involved a plate of sausages, some glue, and the unfortunate discovery that the kitchen table was not as sturdy as everybody had hoped.

"Why do you always say that?" Alec asked him. "And what is a clave anyway?"

Magnus shrugged. "I haven't the faintest idea. My father says it a lot, so I suppose I just picked it up from him."

Alec and Magnus were crouched behind the hedge that separated the Bane's backyard from the Lightwood's, building a bridge for the warlocks so they could get across a particularly boggy patch of ground. Magnus had painted his face in black and white makeup that seemed to have been designed to make him look like a particularly demented clown, complete with a black leather jacket and tight grey jeans with several spiked belts that jingled whenever he moved. Alec hadn't nearly been as extravagant, opting instead for his beloved brown winter coat, blue jeans, and a pair of sturdy brown boots.

"Then why do you say it if you don't know what it means?" Alec asked him, pausing in tying together a complicated series of twigs to look at him.

Magnus looked uncomfortable. "Well, I know it means something bad. My father uses it whenever he wants to swear, but I'm around," he grinned and continued stabbing the sticks for the support poles deep into the mud.

It was silent for a while after that while they worked, until Henry's voice sounded faintly through the hedge.

"Now, now, roses, I went through all the trouble of raking up your petals yesterday, but here you've gone and dropped your underwear all over the place again!"

Magnus stopped and stared for a moment, as if he could see through the hedge. Then he burst out laughing, dropping the bundle of sticks. After a moment Alec joined in.

"Has your uncle always been this crazy or is it a recent problem?" Magnus asked him gravely, when he had regained control over himself. He grinned, and soon they were both cracking up with laughter again.

"Is everything alright down there?" Uncle Henry called unhelpfully from the opposite side of the hedge, which only made them laugh harder.

Everything was alright, of course. Strange as it may seem, as the days had flown past, Magnus and Alec had actually put together a sort of friendship. Every evening after school, when Alec had finished his homework and Magnus had finished whatever unexplainable business he had to do in the house, they would meet in the Bane's overgrown back garden to work on the warlock village. Alec's mother disapproved, of course, but she hadn't exactly forbidden the meetings, which was, as Magnus said "As good excuse as any to get on your mother's nerves,".

"Sorry about her," Alec apologized to Magnus at the end of the first week. "She's just scared I'll catch something – she's absolutely terrified of poison ivy,"

"So you've mentioned the last forty nine billion times," Magnus said, with a roll of his eyes. Then he took Alec around the garden and pointed out the worst clusters of ivy, and how to recognize the distinctive three-leaf cluster and greenish sheen. "I used to get poison ivy all the time when I was a kid."

"Why doesn't your father spray it or something?" asked Alec.

"He doesn't want to," Magnus said quickly, in that brusque tone of voice that told Alec the conversation had officially stopped there. He was always doing that – backing out of conversations, ducking the question, firing back contradictions that left Alec feeling more confused that when he had first asked. Often Magnus would simply turn around and walk away, as he had done the day Alec had seen that frightening face at the window. Alec had never asked him about it, for fear of Magnus exploding and officially ending the fragile bond that had tentatively sprouted between them. Being friends with Magnus Bane was a complicated business, but…

Alec glanced over at Magnus, who was still giggling at Henry's incessant chatter. He was actually, Alec thought, quite a nice person once he let his guard down. He really was no different from anybody else, if one could ignore his shoes and the strange clothes he wore.

They were busy building a network of roads for the warlock village that evening. Warlocks were, by nature, impatient, busy little people who liked to move around a lot, Magnus had explained. But they were not, however, road people, preferring instead to navigate using the myriad of tracks left by small animals.

"It would be good if we could mark them out for the warlocks," Magnus had told him one day at school. "Knowing them, they'll probably forget half the tracks."

"I could do it," Alec volunteered. "I've studied maps at school, and I know about trail markers and everything."

Magnus smiled. "Good."

So from then on, as the official map-maker, it had been Alec's duty to walk around the boundaries of the vast garden with a pencil and notepad, jotting down the location of absolutely everything. He noted the three tree stumps the warlocks might like to use for a meeting place, he sketched the skeleton of the washing line, he jotted down various landmarks. He drew the placement of the back porch, and the boggy, muddy parts that could be hazardous for a small being like a warlock.

It was strangely relaxing, mapping the garden, or it would be if it weren't for the house. Alec spent most of the evening with one eye trained on the blank, black face of the house, particularly the upstairs windows. Occasionally, when he would turn around to note the placement of an abandoned tyre, he would find himself whirling around again, heart in his throat, certain he had seen a curtain flutter or a shade being suspiciously pulled back. But the house always looked the same as it always had – motionless, still and lifeless, until Alec managed to convince himself that it was just a trick of the light and he could move on.

But Alec wouldn't have stopped visiting the yard for the life of him. He loved the feeling of navigating the dense, overgrown tangle of bushes, feeling proud as he deftly traversed the unpredictable ground, steering well clear of the brambles and poison ivy. His own tidy, boring, clean garden, he knew, belonged to his mother. It was under her order, and grew according to her laws. But Magnus Bane's garden was wild and free, and that was how Alec felt as he trampled through the bushes and peered into shadowy dens. Anything could happen in the Bane's backyard. He loved it.

And, when Alec took the time to really look, the evidence of the warlock's exotic life was everywhere. A cache of acorn caps would appear in a tree hollow one day, leading Alec to imagine an industrious network of warlocks reaching up with their little cups to catch the raindrops falling off the leaves.

Several odd-looking, circular dirt clearings would appear at random places throughout the garden, including between the three tree stumps Alec had noted. Even though the clearings held no sign of footsteps, it seemed obvious that they were some sort of meeting place.

But for what? What did the warlocks discuss? Did they discuss it in words, or was their language made up of something else? Did they talk in sign language? Alec pestered Magnus with all those questions, despite him continually claiming there was never a mutter or a whisper heard in the yard, beyond the rustling of the trees.

"If I was a warlock, I communicate in a way that seemed like ordinary sounds, like this," Magnus had once said, before letting out a whistle that sounded remarkably like a little bird. "But don't take my word as gospel," he added, when Alec had looked at him in admiration. "Humans can never really understand the movements of warlocks."

"And you see, that's the thing," Magnus had continued the next day, when Alec had stumbled across a tin pan half filled with water sunk deep into the ground beneath a bush, and was convinced the warlocks used it as a sort of pool. "You swim in a pool, you play on merry-go-rounds, so you think that the warlocks must do the same. But maybe they're not like that at all. Maybe all this…." He gestured around the garden with his black-nailed hands. "Instead of being play, it's all work. Maybe they use all these things to do something. Maybe the merry-go-round isn't a merry-go-round at all, but some sort of magic generator or something."

"Magic generator?" Alec was astounded. He would never had thought of such a thing.

"And the pan is a barbeque, and water is their steak," Magnus had said, but he was smiling, so Alec knew he was just teasing.

"Are you a warlock?" Alec joked.

Magnus rolled his eyes. "I guess I'm just like one."


	2. The Black House

**Evening of the Warlocks **

**Part 2**

**The Black House **

**- ʍ/ƌ - **

In all the time that Alec had been working on the warlock village in the Bane's garden, Magnus had never once invited him inside him house.

He had never offered Alec any food either. He had never asked if he wanted to go up to his room or watch TV. When it rained, Alec went back home. When he got hungry, he went to his own house and his own kitchen.

"Do you want something?" Alec always asked Magnus whenever he did this. "We've got lots of things…" but then Magnus would look at him pointedly and, with a rush of embarrassment, Alec would remember that Magnus's stomach prevented him from consuming anything but the little vials of liquid.

Thus Alec was always careful bringing food into Magnus's yard. Magnus didn't often like to watch Alec munch his way through an apple or a cookie and would often, with an angry exclamation in Dutch, stride off to the opposite end of the garden and wait until Alec had finished.

And yet, for all his pointed grumblings about medicine and doctors, Alec was not convinced Magnus's diet was restricted solely to the blue and pink liquid. Alec occasionally caught him slipping a handful of the berries from the bushes into his mouth when he thought nobody was looking. And he often munched on the mint leaves that grew in a thick cluster around the side of the porch. Alec had studied his unusual eating habits, and reasoned that his odd tastes were probably another example of him being 'like a warlock'.

"Yes, everybody knows Magnus Bane is a warlock," Isabelle sneered to Alec as they made their way to class at school, with slightly hysterical sarcasm. Her voice grew shriller as Alec turned and began walking away. "He's a nasty, creepy little freak who'll get you in trouble! Just you wait!"

Jace and Isabelle were both angry with Alec, and Alec was slowly growing angry at them.

"You think you're so cool because a big sixth grader is your friend," Jace hissed spitefully. "But no one likes Magnus Bane. Nobody wants to hang around his dirty old house. There's nothing in it, do you know that? Somebody sneaked up to the window and looked through."

"Magnus Bane is your friend just because he's too weird to be friends with anybody else," Isabelle added. "You're only his friend because he tells you a bunch of lies about warlocks." Anger flashed across her face and she stepped forward and gave Alec a sharp shove into the lockers. "Why are you so _stupid, _Alec?"

"Shut up!" Alec yelled, and shoved her back. Isabelle looked at him in shock as Alec yelled at her. "Magnus is _not _weird and just because you…"

"Is something wrong here?" came a very familiar voice from behind him.

Alec spun around. "Magnus!"

Magnus Bane was standing behind him. His face was painted in alternate stripes of white and black, his eyes outlined in flaming red and orange. A long coat flapped at his ankles. He had probably just come out of class; Alec realised, and felt a rush of gratitude.

Magnus raised a pierced eyebrow. "Is something the matter?" he inquired, looking scornfully at his siblings as one might look upon a rat.

"Go away, Bane," Jace shouted, dragging Isabelle back away from him by the arm, like he thought Magnus was diseased. Several people who had been walking along the corridor to their next class stopped to stare. Maybe it was that that gave Jace courage, for his voice strengthened. "Stay away from our family! You're a bad person, Magnus Bane!"

Alec looked up at Magnus. His gold-green eyes had turned frigid and narrowed, and Alec felt a small thrill of fear. Jace swallowed audibly as Magnus towered over him, staring down at him with a look of detached interest.

Eventually, Magnus snorted, and turned away. "I guess I shouldn't have expected a great speech from one such as illiterate as yourself, Jonathan Lightwood." He whirled around to face him again so suddenly Jace cringed, leaned in close and hissed. "Saya suka kurang dari setengah dari Anda setengah sebanyak yang Anda pantas!"

It was hard to tell whether Jace's expression was frozen in fear or laughter as Magnus whirled around, grabbed hold of Alec's arm and pulled him down the corridor.

"What was all that about pants?" Alec managed when he had gotten his breath back and his siblings were several corridors away from him. He didn't mention Jace's outburst; the look on Magnus's face had been frightening enough, and he didn't want to antagonize him further.

Far from being angry, Magnus snorted with laughter. The whole thing seemed to have amused him immensely. "It's Indonesian."

Alec shook his head. "You know so many languages."

"My father's Dutch and my mother was Indonesian."

Filing away the piece of information in his mind so he could exclaim over it later, Alec asked. "What did you say to Jace?"

Magnus's mouth twisted. "I said I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

"What does that mean?"

Magnus's contorted mouth now looked moderately like a smile. "Only a person who's read the entire Lord of the Rings can fully understand."

Alec still didn't understand. "What's the Lord of the Rings?"

Magnus gaped at him. "You've never heard of the Lord of the Rings? What's wrong with you?" with a small laugh at Alec's expression, he amended kindly. "It's a book series. Don't worry, you'll probably read it when you're older."

"Oh." Realising they weren't anywhere near the classrooms, Alec asked. "Where are we going?"

Magnus grinned. "To the shops."

"We're wagging school?" Alec asked, aghast.

Magnus cracked his neck and made a face. "If you want to use such an uncouth expression, then yeah."

"But we'll get caught! And I have a music lesson…"

"Don't worry. I do this all the time. And if a teacher does ask you, just say you were sick, or had an orthodontist appointment or something." Magnus looked pleased with himself. They were reaching the school's back gates now – so far away across the oval there was no sign of any of the school buildings in sight now – just acres and acres of garden.

"But…"

"No buts, you're either with me, or you have to turn up to class fifteen minutes late and explain where you were," Magnus let go of Alec's hand and fiddled with the latch on the gates.

Alec bit his lip. He had never missed a day of school since pre-school. But the prospect of wagging school seemed strangely tempting – the same inexplicable magic that surrounded the warlock village seemed to beckon to him. And the thought of showing up to class late and attempting to fumble through an excuse was daunting.

Alec breathed out, swallowed, and looked at Magnus. Magnus was still fiddling with the gate, hissing in Dutch under his breath every time his fingers slipped on the rusted iron. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"This gate's latch is broken and doesn't close properly." Magnus said through gritted teeth. "Normally I can fiddle with it and it opens, but… open domme dingen!" he huffed at the gates, shoving against them.

There was a sharp creak and Magnus tumbled forward as the gates parted.

"Are you alright?" Alec called anxiously.

Magnus sat up where he had fallen to the ground and grinned. His black coat was covered in dust. "I never knew Dutch was the magical command for opening gates."

Alec rolled his eyes.

**ʍ/ƌ**

Not only had Alec never seen the inside of Magnus's house, he had never seen his parents.

Alec knew Magnus's mother had died long ago – Magnus himself had told him – but he had not seen hide or hair of Magnus's father except for that day where Alec had caught a faint glimpse of him in the upstairs window. Mr. Bane never came to the door whenever Alec called for Magnus. He never came out of the house to see what they were doing. He never made a sound. In fact, if Alec didn't know any better and if he hadn't seen that glimpse in the window, he would have thought Magnus didn't have any parents. In fact, now that Alec thought about it, Magnus didn't seem like the type to have parents – far too old and tough and strange and grown-up.

His secret trips to the shops only enhanced it.

Alec had even began to accompany him. Oh, he was very careful, and always had a carefully crafted excuse ready – at times it wasn't even necessary, as Magnus went to the shops after school as well and sometimes two trips in one day weren't necessary.

At first, Alec had thought that what accounted for a trip to the shops in Magnus's world was maybe a trip to the chocolate factory, or to the store for another pair of high heels, but the reality was quite different. Instead, Alec found himself accompanying Magnus: to the drugstore to pick up a prescription, to the grocers two blocks away to pick up some carrots, a carton of milk and a box of Hershey's chocolate. Alec accompanied him secretly, of course. His mother would never have allowed him to walk around town, which was more like a city when it reached the downtown parts. She would have worried about the traffic on busy streets, the beckoning finger of a stranger. She would have worried that Alec might become lost, get bitten by the mangy, feral dogs that were sometimes seen roaming the streets, or fall into a hole and lie there, unconscious and forgotten.

Apparently, Magnus's father shared none of those concerns. Alec wondered if he even knew where his son was at times. Of course, Magnus himself didn't worry. Perhaps he had never been told about the dangers of the city. He went to the laundry to pick up clothes, went to the bank to cash a check, went to the hardware store to pick up a packet of bolts and screws on layby.

Alec watched Magnus manipulate these adult, grown-up ventures with increasing amazement as the week wore on. Magnus Bane wasn't that much taller than him, and although he was four years older, he still looked far too young to be managing the adult world so effectively.

But effective he was. He was effective at hiding things too – Alec and Magnus would sneak out during lunch to the store for cans of fish for his cat. Later on at school, Alec would see no sign of them around Magnus at all.

"Shouldn't your father be handling this all for you?" The doctor Magnus went to for the prescribed vials of medicine, Jem Carstairs, once questioned him. His tone was sharp but friendly – he and Magnus were on good terms, even though Alec himself was slightly intimidated by him. Jem looked unusually young, with odd silvery hair and even paler, strange eyes.

Magnus, as always, responded to this with a roll of his eyes. "Please, Jem. I've been doing this for years. I can handle this by myself,"

"Sure, sure," Jem shot back good-naturedly, and handed over the change.

"How do you know how to do all those things?" Alec had asked Magnus in amazement at the last precious five minutes of lunchtime, when they had just come back from the strange doctor, Jem Carstairs. He was sitting at the same table as Magnus now, and trying hard not to notice the raccoon-like stares of the goths boring into the back of his head. "Does your father get you to do everything for you?"

Magnus gulped at a vial of the medicine and shuddered. "Urgh. No, no, not everything, just what he tells me." He glanced sideways at him, filled with a sudden, strange intensity. "Sometimes he sends me to these really weird places." He broke off to finish his medicine, grimaced, and added. "He's sick, you see."

So, Magnus's father was sick. That scrap of information was one of the few dregs Alec had managed to glean throughout the month he had been visiting the Bane's back yard. Magnus never spoke about himself willingly. He never ever told any stories about his family. If Alec questioned him too much, he would always respond with an angry outburst, sometimes in either Dutch or Indonesian, or he would storm off.

"Why is your father sick?"

"Tidak lagi…"

"Are you an only child?"

"Have you ever seen any siblings, Alexander?"

"I tried to call you. Why was your telephone shut off?"

Silence. A low mutter. "Om vervelende kleine kinderen lasting vallen me de hele dag te stoppen…"

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Alec would normally fling up his hands in exasperation, and the questions would stop there.

"I didn't see you at lunch today. Where were you?" Isabelle asked him one day, when they were helping their mother bake a cake. Isabelle was sitting in a chair by the over, watching the oven timer like a hawk. She did not look at him.

Alec swallowed the leftover dough he had been sneakily chewing, as his mother was off busying herself with Jace and Henry, who had apparently succeeded in building a giant train track all around the landing. "I was with Magnus."

Isabelle closed her eyes. Alec could see her jaw tightening. "Oh." She reached across and popped what remained of the leftover dough into her mouth before he could finish it. "What were you doing?" she asked with her mouth full.

Alec shrugged uncomfortably. "Just stuff. You know, talking."

"About what?" Isabelle swallowed and turned to face him.

"Magnus was telling me about this book called Lord of the Rings," Alec offered.

"Oh yeah, I think Henry said he'd read it…"

Isabelle was going along with it. But Alec could still see the suspicion in her eyes.

**ʍ/ƌ**

Alec often wondered about Magnus Bane's life inside his big, black, gloomy house. In early October, he finally got a chance to see. It wasn't by invitation – he'd knocked and knocked on the big black door, but nobody would answer. The loud rapping sound of his knuckles against the wood boomed eerily, and he shivered.

He stepped back through the frost towards the warlock village, tilting his head back to survey the upstairs windows. "Magnus!" he yelled. His voice seemed puny when compared with the sheer height of the house. "Magnus, where are you? It's me, Alec! Alec Lightwood." He added, voice dying to a whisper, for the garden was big and the house was tall and the air was cold, and he was beginning to feel slightly scared.

The garden spread around him like a cloak, hunched and lumped under the cold. Bushes whose dense shapes he had come to know well now posed in awkward positions, their skeletal branches splayed and bent.

"Magnus, where are you!"

Magnus had not come to school for a week. Oh, he had disappeared for months on end before –one of the many incidents that had fuelled the hate-filled rumours – but for some reason this spate of disappearances unsettled him. Something was wrong. Stranger still, Alec never saw him working on the warlock village whenever he came in the evenings. The task of ensuring the warlocks a steady supply of food, and for marking the roads and fixing the houses had fallen to him.

"Are the Banes away?" Alec had asked his mother the day before. A stupid question – his mother had no more inkling of the Bane family's goings on than she had of a family in Siberia.

On Saturday, Alec had made the decision to step up to the door and, if there was no answer when he knocked, go in himself. It was now Sunday, and he was prepared to do it. True, Magnus might skin him alive if Alec barged into his house uninvited, but at least Alec would be reassured that everything was alright.

He banged his fist hard on the door. Clouds of white, steamy breath exploded from his mouth. The hollow echoes of his knocks seemed to reverberate through the air.

"Magnus Bane!" he thumped the door. There was no doorbell and no knocker – just an expanse of black wood and a single black doorknob in the centre. Slowly, praying that everything was alright and he was just being silly, Alec reached out and turned the doorknob.

"Magnus?" his voice edged out over the threshold like a tentative mouse. He stepped forward, straining to see through the dimness. "Hello?"

If, by some charm, Alec had suddenly been whisked down to the size of a mouse, the house still would not have seemed as big or as empty as it did to him now. A long, empty corridor stretched along ahead of him until it turned a corner sharply. Two open doorways lined each side – they had no doors, just gaping spaces, like wide, cavernous mouths.

An old, dusty black piano that looked like it had never been used was pushed back against the corridor wall – a line of flickering candles atop it sent their eerie, wavering light dancing up the grey walls. There was no lightbulb or any source of electrical lighting anywhere in the corridor, so it seemed. Alec tried to imagine Magnus or his father sitting at the piano, playing a tune, lighting the candles, but he couldn't. The instruments seemed to have some inhuman quality, as if they never had, nor never will be touched by human hands.

As Alec inched tentatively along the corridor, the sound of his footsteps seemed to fall like hammer blows against the creaking, rotting floorboards. The tiniest sniff or rustle of fabric was magnified to an alarming hiss in the emptiness and stillness. The air was cold, icy – it pressed against his skin like a possessive, enveloping shroud, reeking of dust and snow and… something else, something intangible, a sharp, bitter tang that reminded Alec ridiculously of the colour silver. Dust bunnies were scattered along the baseboards, dust lying black against the floor, shadowy cobwebs trailing from the cracked ceiling.

Alec investigated each of the rooms as he passed them. The first room was empty except for two shabby armchairs marooned in the middle of a sea of dirty grey floorboards, leaking stuffing and worn down to springs on the seats. The armchairs were positioned a few meters away from the window – the black curtains drawn tight, allowing not one ray of light to permeate through. A single circle of candles, lit with merrily dancing flames that still did little to alleviate the gloom, wound a bright red chain around the two chairs. Alec stepped over the candle and drew a gloved hand along the backs of each chair. A thick layer of dust clung to his glove.

The second room was completely empty except for four small candles placed at each corner of the room, which reminded Alec of Jace's report on the state of the house. The room contained nothing but an expanse of the same grey wood floorboards, the four candles, a cracked ceiling trailing cobwebs, and… Alec squinted through the gloom. Wait, there was something – weird, intricate symbols had been drawn on each wall in thick black ink, almost hidden beneath the dust and the gloom, undulating and swirling, circling in on themselves, so that whenever Alec tried to follow the path of one symbol, he found himself inexplicably led on to the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Magnus Bane and his father had gone away quickly, that much was clear. The house was shut down. They had left quickly, without telling anybody – Alec suddenly wondered if that was the reason behind Magnus's sudden, industrious shopping trips over the past few weeks. But there was nothing here to steal. Never before had Alec seen a place so stripped of so many basic comforts.

And yet Alec had to admit, the whole thing was rather exciting. The undefinable, bitter, almost spicy tang was thick on the air, beckoning him to explore, to traverse through the house, to gaze at the symbols on the wall, to lose himself in the odd, weird magic of the place…

The third room, it was plain to see, was the kitchen. A yellowed, rectangular refrigerator gurgled in the corner atop an expanse of black and white tiles, an empty black bench stretched along the side wall on top of a bank of white cupboards and an oven and stove thick with dust. A kitchen table made of rough-hewn wood squatted aggressively opposite the bench. The whole room was dotted with a scattering of those tiny candles – tiny red flames casting everything in an eerie, undulating glow.

Alec shivered. It was so cold his breath was still coming out in gusts of steam. Wasn't there _any _heating or lighting inside this place? No wonder Magnus seemed so impervious to the cold, if he'd had to live with it all his life.

But just what did his father do, exactly? He didn't work at a grocery shop, that was clear – Alec was certain that any job, even a grocer's, earned enough money to pay for simple things like heating and electricity.

He decided to explore further.

The fourth room was the most bizarre of them all. Instead of floorboards there was hard glass tiles covered in a geometric system of black and white swirls that made Alec dizzy to look at them. A circle of glowing candles surrounded an inner circle of smaller candles lay in the centre of the room, and filled the air with a substantially brighter light than any of the other rooms. Every wall was covered again in those strange symbols, this time daubed in a thick red substance that only made the light seem all the more eerie as it caused the ink to glisten. The strange, coppery tang was sharper here, more distinct. Alec examined the rotting insects lying shrivelled against the baseboard in distaste. This was not, he decided, a room that was used often. Strange scratches also marred the baseboard, decorating the grey wallpaper in a series of white slashes. Alec coughed at the strange reek, covered his mouth, and stepped out of the room. He wondered vaguely what it was.

The corridor turned sharply to a flight of stairs that led to the second storey– Alec stared warily at it, the stairs, carpeting in a grey material thick with dust, the banisters that rose like claws on either side, the film of peeling black paint that spanned the banisters. The staircase was the kind that looped lazily in a single spiral, and Alec suddenly felt certain he did not want to know what was at the top.

Plagued by indecision, Alec huffed at the foot of the stairs, and shoved his gloved hands further into the pockets of his parka. The coldness in Magnus's house was intense; Alec could feel the iciness stinging the tip of his nose and his cheeks. Outside, he could hear the wind moan, and as it did, it seemed like the whole house moaned along with it, creaking and groaning.

Alec turned to head back to the kitchen, and had already taken several steps in the direction of it, when he heard a sound. It sounded like a faint series of knocking, like something was being rolled or knocked around on the floor, and it was coming from the storey above.

Alec climbed the first few stairs, stopping at the fifth. "Magnus?"

It seemed ridiculous that Magnus and his father should be here, after all that he had seen… but then, if the Banes were away, who had lit the candles? Alec felt a tremble of fear.

The noise started again, and he jumped.

Maybe he had been too tense and jittery all along to notice. The house seemed odd, eerie, threatening, and maybe he had been distracted by that. But maybe, all the time, Alec's protective antennae had been picking up warning signals, a breath of air, the wisp of a scent, a sigh, a whisper. For suddenly, he knew he was not alone in Magnus's house. Somebody was here with him.

Alec knew he should run. He imagined himself racing for the door, flinging it open, crossing Magnus's back garden in three strides and not stopping until he had crashed through the hedge and was safely on the other side.

But Alec didn't move. He stared at the ceiling. He remember how empty the garden had seemed lately – how, even though he was doing his best to mend them, more and more warlock houses were falling to ruin. Their fragile construction had never been intended to survive through the winter. Alec remembered a scrap of the knowledge Magnus had imparted to him: "Warlocks never come outside unless they have to." Unless they _had _to. And, with Magnus and his father away, the house would have seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Over his head, the little rolling noises had stopped. In the silence that followed, Alec found himself climbing the stairs, although he was still slightly scared – trembling with every creaking step, and shivering in a house so bitterly cold it seemed like the icy core of all winters had solely targeted Magnus's house.

Alec reached the top of the stairs. He paused, holding onto the banister.

The staircase had branched out to a vast landing. In the darkness to his left, the little noises had started again, louder. Alec took shallow breaths to soften the sound of his breathing. He was not scared now, but filled with determination and excitement. His fear was that the warlocks had heard him coming, with their sharp ears and quick eyes. He was sure they would perform some vanishing trick the moment he got too near, or if they suspected his presence. He prepared himself, wondering what the warlocks looked like, then smiled. The warlocks could have blue hair and orange eyes for all he cared – he was ready.

He looked to the left, towards the sounds.

What he found wasn't the warlocks, or at least, not the creatures. It was a part of the warlock village. Those tiny little houses of leaves and sticks, the driveways of pebbles, even the town square and their little warlock presents, all lovingly transported up to the second storey of Magnus's house. No more than several inches high, they sat in the gloom patiently, as if waiting for something.

Alec exhaled in the gloom, and sank to his knees. He buried his face in his gloves and screwed his face up, willing himself not to cry. It wasn't fair – he had waited so long to see a warlock, he had done so much…

He inhaled the icy air and got up. Careful not to disturb the warlock village, he turned around, and was about to head back down the stairs when something caught his attention.

To the right of the landing, there was a door. A large black door, tightly shut. An eerie blue glow, similar to the light of the red candles Alec had become so familiar with downstairs, was seeping through the cracks – except this light was erratic and dancing – it _moved_. It poured through the keyhole too, reaching out a slender deep blue beam into the blackness, almost like a single, beckoning finger. To Alec, it seemed like the light was building up against the opposite side of the door, so that it bulged outwards with the pressure of containing…

What? Was it magic the room contained? Alec felt his skin prickle.

As Alec stared at it, the whispering – the whispering he had all this time thought was just the wind – intensified, rising to a rattling hiss, too indistinct for Alec to make out more than a few words.

"Vader… klaar… het is niet… licht…" the voice sounded strained.

Alec tensed up as he stared at the sea blue light, heart beating wildly in his chest. Unwillingly, almost as if drawn by a magnet, Alec came forward and stood before the throbbing door. The whispers were still going, rolling along with the weird blue light… and, beneath it, faintly, were the sound of laughter. But it wasn't pleasant laughter – a high, weird cackle.

"Ben je nu in orde, vader?" whoever it was laughed, a desperate, strained cackle. "Niets wat ik doe zal nooit genoeg zijn voor u, zal het? Waarom ben je zo ziek de hele tijd?"

Somebody behind the door _moaned_.

Alec stared. He stared at the plain black wood, stared at the round black doorknob. Slowly, inexplicably, his gloved hand rose to close around the sphere of black wood. The whispers, cackling and moans reached a crescendo as Alec turned the knob and the room was revealed in a rush of heat and blue light.

He could not believe what he was seeing. He looked again and again and simply could not understand. Then he understood. The warlocks had played a trick on him after all. They had sensed him coming at the last minute and vanished, substituting another scene to dazzle him, to confuse him.

Magnus was sitting in the centre of a ring of blue candles. The folds of a long black coat were draped over his shoulders, and his head was tilted back. His eyes were closed, his smile serene, a ring of candles surrounding him – except this candlelight was blue, a bright acid blue, the same blue of Magnus's medicine, and roaring impossibly high. A black rocking chair was rolling steadily forward and back just beyond the ring of candles, and inside the chair was a twisted, shrivelled shape – a withered figure, with that face, the same gaunt, white face with the sunken cheeks, the stringy black hair and wide dark eyes, the same face he had seen at the window all those weeks ago.

The room was filled with the roar of the flames. Beyond the ring of candles lay a flickering tapestry of light and dark, an ever-changing, ever-shifting miasma of shades. Those strange symbols were decorating the walls again; pale and ghostly in the weird lighting. Those warlocks! They were so imaginative. They had changed the whispers and the rolling noises to the crackle of the flames and the rocking of a rocking chair. They had changed themselves into Magnus and… his father, was it? Ingenious!

All at once, the scene in the room came to life. Magnus's eyes flashed open and the laughter, that weird high cackle, died, and Alec realised it had been Magnus who had been laughing. The flames roared higher, and his black-ringed gold eyes snapped onto Alec's face. They shot across the room with the force of bullets, a force so hard they made him gasp. This was no trick.

"You!" Magnus screamed, and it was not so much an open mouth than an open maw, with lips the colour of dried blood and teeth like serrated fangs. Magnus jumped up, snapping his black-nailed fingers and the blue fire faded, winking out with a harsh pop and a small crackle.

"Why are you here?" Magnus screamed, as Alec stared at him in horror. He leapt at Alec like a wild animal, as if he meant to tear him to pieces. "Get out! Get out!"

"Magnus! It's me!" Alec tried to say, but his voice was strangled in surprise.

The shrivelled figure in the rocking chair opened its mouth, it's horrible, hideous mouth with serrated teeth and a writhing, forked black tongue, and moaned. A low terrible sound, but Magnus's face contorted in distress. "Nee, vader, het zal fijn zijn, alles in orde is, zul je goed zijn, maak je geen zorgen, ik zal zorg dragen voor deze jongen… Why are you still here?" he screamed at Alec. He whirled and rushed across the room, a blur of black coat and white face and black heels and nails. He grabbed the front of Alec's coat with both hands and pushed him out the door. Then he dragged him along the hall and tried to shove him down the stairs.

"Stop it!" Alec cried, struggling. "Stop it! It's me!"

Magnus stopped. He stopped long enough to pull Alec's face close to his and snarl at him like a wolf.

"You get out and don't come back," Magnus hissed, in this new, terrible voice that contained the echo of the roaring sound his father had been making upstairs. "Forget you ever came here. Erase this day from your mind." His grip tightened on his wrists, nails digging into his skin. Magnus's eyes were blazing, his jaw taut and trembling, the corners of his eyes glistening. "It didn't happen. Nothing happened. You were never in this house."

Alec stared at him in horror. Heat flooded his face, and his eyes burned. He turned and fled down the stairs.

"If you come back, you won't ever go home again!" Magnus screamed after him, voice following Alec all the way down the hall, past the bare empty rooms. "Come back and I'll skin you alive, Azrael help me, I will. If you tell anybody anything, even one tiny little thing, if you so much as breath a word to those stupid siblings of yours, that will be the end of you! The awful end. The final bloody end." Magnus's voice trailed off to a terrible, miserable, choked whisper. "God helpe mij, waarom moet alles zo moeilijk?"

Alec didn't understand what he was saying. He was racing for the door at last, and he was flinging it open, and he was crossing Magnus's back garden in three strides and not stopping until he had crashed through the hedge and was safely on the other side.

**ʍ/ƌ**

There were times during the next week when Alec thought he must have imagined his visit to Magnus's house. Certainly it seemed suitably surreal – a shadowy staircase, a secret room, a sense of unreality, of having been in a fantasy. For imaginings, like fantasies, take place only in your head. Whatever happens in them, they leave few signs of outward impact.

So it was with this frightening visit. Though Alec seemed to have been in Magnus Bane's house, and though certain shocking things had happened, his life continued in the most ordinary way. Day after day, he woke up, had breakfast, played with Jace and Isabelle, went to school, he did his homework, shopped at the supermarket with his mother and siblings, brushed his teeth, combed his hair. Night after night, he watched TV, played with Jace, read books, was kissed good night by his mother, and fell asleep in his bed. Nothing was changed, and nothing was changed at Magnus Bane's house. It looked as it had always looked – tall, black, forbidding. At night, the windows were as dark as ever.

At school, people said Magnus had gone away with his father on a holiday. With relief, Alec thought it must be true. There was no sign of him anywhere. Nobody came out of his house and no one went in. Nobody came to look after the warlock village (Alec had peeked through the hedge and seen it).

Nobody talked about Magnus Bane either. Now that he was no on hand to weird people out with his clothes, to totter around in high heels, or to sit by himself drinking bottles of funny-coloured liquid, there was no reason to discuss him. Magnus Bane was gone. Alec had had a dream. The school office had received a note from Mr Bane officially withdrawing his son from school. There was no need to look into matter more deeply, and Jace and Isabelle were too ecstatic at the fact Alec was playing with them again they didn't mention Magnus.

But, deep down, Alec knew he hadn't really dreamt the empty house. He knew he had been awake when he had climbed the spiral stairs. He knew the candles and the symbols and the rocking chair in the second story room were real. But he didn't want to think about any of those things. Hadn't he been told to forget? "Forget you ever came here. Erase it completely from your mind," Magnus Bane had said. And Alec did. He shut off the lights and turned away. But the memory of Magnus warming himself by the ring of fire, tending to his father in the upstairs room could not be ignored.

"Go away!" Alec whispered to the memory of Magnus Bane under his breath.

Whenever he thought of Magnus Bane in the second storey room, Alec thought immediately of the warlocks. He had expected the warlocks to be there. More than that, he had known they were there – the warlock village had been there. He had felt their presence as strongly as he felt the presence of his mother when she was in another part of the Lightwood's house.

Whatever the story had been with the room and the warlocks, neither Magnus nor the warlocks had returned to work on the village. Alec crept back to look again, when evening unrolled itself over the garden. The little houses were more broken than before. The big house and the garden stood silent, abandoned. He looked up to the window on the second floor and there, for a terrifying moment, he thought he saw something. Then it dissolved, became a trick of the mind. Magnus Bane was gone. The warlocks were gone. There was nothing, nothing in that old empty house.

"Go away, go away," Alec whispered and flattened his hands against his ears.

"What?" his mother asked.

"Were you talking to me?" Uncle Henry blinked.

"Alec, what's wrong with you!" Jace and Isabelle shrieked. "If you want to tell us something, tell us!"

But Alec stayed silent.


End file.
